Seth & Jackie in Geneva and Lausanne

Today I was on the phone with a graphic designer I had not spoken to before. We were speaking a mix of English and French, planning our meeting tomorrow, and talking about the project. Near the end of the conversation we had this exchange:

The explanation: he was, it seems, quite politely inquiring as to my pronoun. Not in striking a blow against the gender binary sense, alas, but because he wanted to make sure he could address me with the informal pronoun tu rather than having to stick with the formal vous. French even has two verbs for this—tutoyer and vouvoyer.

In retrospect, Ihad probably been calling himvous because that’s what I was mostly taught to do in high school and that threw him off. But I’m a generation younger than him—maybe I should be calling himvous! According to this article from a few years back the use of tu vs. vous has been something of a political issue since the French revolution. Woah. Way longer than non-gender normative pronouns have existed (I think)!